No. 100, January 2016

Newspaper Jan Mot Afgiftekantoor 1000 Brussel 1 Verschijnt vijfmaal per jaar in V. U . Jan Mot januari – maart – mei – Regentschapsstraat 67 augustus – oktober 1000 Brussel No. 100, januari 2016 Erkenningsnummer P309573 174–176 Jaargang 20 No. 100 rtunity to discuss not only the ogy by Erwin Panofsky but an artunity to discuss not content of the lip-synched also the different strategies of only the content of the conference on iconol using the lecture as lip-synched (advertisement) (advertisement) (advertisement) 174 175 176 30/01, 4pm Exhibition Art Fair 06/02 – 26/03 24/02 - 28/02 TRIS VONNA- Opening JAN MOT MICHELL 05/02, 5-8pm AT DAVID LAMELAS ARCO MADRID WASTEFUL Booth 9A12 ILLUMINATIONS: EXPERIENCIAS IFEMA Feria de Madrid DISTRACTED VISUALES LISTENING 1962 & 1968 History Can Jan Mot Rue de la Régence / DISCUSSION Regentschapsstraat 67 Wait WITH 1000 Brussels, Belgium (Part 4) THE ARTIST Did such type of works deserve a different structure than a regular exhibition format? Jan Mot It was the interest in creating a space to dis- By Antony Hudek Rue de la Régence / cuss ideas more actively than they normally Regentschapsstraat 67 are that brought us to a number of works ANTWERP, JAN. 18 - In Part 4 of this five- 1000 Brussels, Belgium that will be presented in this program. But, part essay, I continue to reflect on queer art how is this different from say, a public con- histories that would position AIDS and the ference program, we asked ourselves. After spread of HIV not as an interruption of linear Did such type of works deserve a different some discussions it became clear, that even chronologies, but as a historiographic chal- structure than a regular exhibition format? if it might look like a seminar, this should lenge, an imperative to rethink how we nar- It was the interest in creating a space to dis- still be conceived as an exhibition. In it the rate histories of art and artists from the 1970s cuss ideas more actively than they normally time and function of often so-called educa- to the mid-1990s. In Part 1 (Newspaper Jan are that brought us to a number of works tional programs would be blurred, and will Mot, no. 97, May 2015), I took Douglas that will be presented in this program. But, conceive the gallery not solely as a space to Crimp’s memoirs as a starting point for this how is this different from say, a public con- exhibit works that might or might not spark rethinking. For a number of years now, ference program, we asked ourselves. After a discussion. It is certainly not the first time Crimp, the art historian, curator and AIDS some discussions it became clear, that even that the gallery engages in such activity. activist, has embarked on an autobiographi- if it might look like a seminar, this should The program called Oral Culture which cal writing project in which he looks back on still be conceived as an exhibition. In it the was organized in 2008-09 explored live oral his formative years in New York in the late time and function of often so-called educa- works to be presented in the presence of an 1970s and early 1980s, connecting what tional programs would be blurred, and will audience. It is in this spirit that we hope at the time were two separate worlds: his 2 Newspaper Jan Mot Hudek 174–176 scholarly work as part of the editorial board of the prestigious October magazine; and his life as a gay man, cruising the New York peers and bars. Stitching together these two worlds, I argued, kept conventional history intact: the authorial ‘I’ of the survivor cloaks itself in the veracity of the testimonial, further legitimated by the theoretical sophistica- tion of the October-trained critic. In Part 2 (no. 98, August 2015), I dis- cussed the work of the French artist Philippe Thomas, who died of AIDS in 1995, at the age of 44. Thomas’ oeuvre is exemplary, for it offers one of the most vivid ripostes to the autobiographical reparation exercised by Crimp and others. From the early 1980s, the artist began to question the referential stabil- ity of the proper name (‘Philippe Thomas’) by, among other means, granting the author- ship of his art works to the collectors who acquired them, or to his agency readymades belong to everyone®. The more Thomas strove to elude the grip of his authorial name, the more this absent core became the struc- turing principle of his work, becoming a string of interlocking and dangerously hom- onymous words. Most recently, in Part 3 (no. 99, October 2015), I interviewed the artist Megan Francis Sullivan, whose appropriation of appropriative discourses of the 1980s seems to me to offer a powerful historiographic tool to look back on the so-called AIDS decade and to craft queer histories motivated by admiration as well as parody. The work of the American sculptor Tom Burr represents for Sullivan a particularly compelling scenario: his queer Scott Burton's work at the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States in New York. adaptations of minimalist sculptural forms result for her in an oddly straight construc- tion, where the subjective identities of both new ways to discuss work that eluded the strict assumptions of what was good art and appropriator and appropriated come out abstract pictorial paradigms promulgated by what wasn’t, Burton defended much more strengthened. In contrast, Sullivan’s loose Greenberg. Was a particular sculpture theat- eclectic views, championing a minimalist samplings of Burr’s own queer appropria- rical and performative, or on the contrary sculptor like Tony Smith as well as a figura- tions question the subjective coordinates of anti-anthropomorphic and objective? This tive painter like Alex Katz. What mattered to the appropriative act. In words reminiscent question, posed as an alternative in the Burton was the ‘allusive’ nature of art, the of Philippe Thomas, Sullivan avowed: 1970s, became in the 1980s and 1990s an psychological and emotional power con- invitation to recombination: it is the theatri- veyed by the work – a power he saw lacking I never felt that ownership over my own cal quality of a Donald Judd sculpture that in most minimalist art, especially Judd’s. The biography is straightforward, or something allows Burr to replay it as a performative and art historian David Getsy is right to empha- to be acknowledged. (…) I’ve always found abstract piece; and Thomas could re-perform sise Burton’s importance as a critic: while it completely unimaginable to own one’s Duchamp’s conceptualism because nominal- most New York formalists were taking sides own desires and biography in a straight ism and the performative were no longer between theatricality and presentness, Bur- way. To me it would always be a sort of seen as antagonist. ton was imagining both at work in very dif- parody, and yet I like the idea of taking a ‘gay The artist I would like to consider here ferent types of art objects.1 identity’ seriously. – the too little-known American artist Scott As an artist, Burton began performing Burton, who died of AIDS in 1989 at the age with functional objects, mainly chairs and This summary of the first three parts of my of 50 – took the transformation of Greenber- benches, in the 1970s and 1980s. Burton saw essay brings out a historical common gian absolutes into performative and concep- in the piece of furniture a limit case in the ground: the declining power of Clement tual forays to new levels. From the mid- overlap between art and ‘ordinary’ life. The Greenberg’s formalism in the 1970s, a de- 1960s until the mid-1970s, Burton was chairs he would stage, and as of 1975 cast cline precipitated by minimalist, post-mini- primarily a critic, taking part in the debates and sculpt, were not ‘primary structures’, nor malist and conceptual practices. In the ab- surrounding minimalism and post-minimal- even sculpture, but ‘pragmatic structures’, sence of aesthetic diktats, writers and artists ism alongside the likes Michael Fried and objects that blurred the distinctions between in the late 1960s and early 1970s had to find Rosalind Krauss. Whereas the latter held to art, design and the utilitarian object.2 This 3 Newspaper Jan Mot In Brief 174–176 may have remained a rather touching idealis- jecthood and political visibility, on the agen- tic position had Burton not pushed this rea- cy of the collective to assert the rights denied soning to the point of contradiction. In his the individual. By contrast, Burton performs Manon later installations – large benches sited in – and thereby makes quietly visible – the ‘public’ spaces such as corporate plazas or very disappearing act enforced upon gay museum courtyards – Burton’s work blends subjects. This act, I would claim, is queer in de Boer so thoroughly with its late capitalist environ- so far as it undermines the very terms upon ment that their mimetic invisibility becomes which both consensus and identity are con- a high-stakes aesthetic gambit. In his intro- structed. If the invisibility and openness of shortlisted for ductory essay to the catalogue of Harald his corporate décors run the risk of making Szeemann’s 1969 exhibition Live in Your them seem complicit, their materiality and Head: When Attitudes Become Form, Burton engagement with the anonymous life of the the Vincent concedes that ‘no afunctional art can really working crowd allows them to resist the spec- be anything but symbolic, but it is compel- tacularisation of the revolutionary subject. ling to see, at least, the continuing dilation of In their affective resonance and visual Award 2016 art’s limits, to watch the quotation marks get indeterminacy, Burton’s pragmatic struc- further and further apart.’3 tures enact the vulnerability of the political DEN HAAG – JAN.

Load more